Technological Products and Privacy
Introduction
The electronic devices we use have changed and made our lives easier in so many ways. Smartphones, laptops, etc. have enhanced communication, and they can also be used for entrainment purposes. For instance, games and devices can encourage the development of analytical skills and cognitive learning. Nevertheless, concerns have been increasing in the past years over the safety of electronic gadgets. Many have argued that the electronic devices that we use in our lives listen to almost everything we say. Patent applications from tech giants such as Google and Amazon reveal how smart speakers powered by their Voice Assistant and Alexa are always spying on us. Others claim that in the near future, our gadgets might have the ability to eavesdrop on almost everything in our lives, from our toilet flushing habits to our most confidential conversations. They also argue that tech giants could be using surveillance software in electronic gadgets for intrusive digital advertising massive data collection. Cheever’s novel “The Enormous Radio” (which will also be referred to in this essay) successfully captures these privacy concerns. This essay will explore different views on the topic of privacy and attempt to find common ground between the multiple views.
Privacy Concerns in the Story “The Enormous Radio”
Concerns have since time immemorial been raised about the safety of using these gadgets. When Cheever was writing his story “The Enormous Radio” in 1947, radio entertainment was about 25 years old. Cheever wrote the story because he was worried about privacy at the time. In some way, the radio had the ability to listen to the conversations of other people, even in their most private rooms. For this reason, therefore, Cheever’s “The Enormous Radio” can be said to be addressing domestic privacy. The radio that Irene received from his husband Jim was “an aggressive intruder” that not only disrupted their lives but also invaded the privacy of their neighbours. Through the radio, they could hear very intimate and private things about their neighbours, and they were very surprised. For instance, they could hear their neighbour when discussing their finances; they could hear them discussing sexual matters; they could hear them discuss issues to do with their social lives, among others. Because of what they could hear about their neighbours through the radio, Irene and Jim became worried that their neighbours could also have been listening to them (Cheever, 1983)
As time went by, Jim and Irene began to be affected in different ways because of the radio and what it could do. For example, Jim began to express concerns to his wife Irene that it was indecent and improper to eavesdrop on other people’s private affairs. His wife, on the other hand, became so saddened by what their neighbours were going through that she began to imagine terrible things about her own family. When Mrs. Osborn got beaten by her husband, Irene asked her husband to go over to their house and stop the beating; when she learned about the handyman’s affair with one of the married women, she became so worried that she sought a faithfulness confirmation from Jim, her husband. Jim became so worried about the effect the radio was having on his wife that he called a repairman to come over and fix it.
While reading Cheever’s story, I could not help by thinking about our own situation in this era of technological advancement. We have become so dependent upon electronic gadgets that we sometimes forget that they could be violating our privacy. It has reached a point in our lives when we are no longer in control of our lives: we communicate with our friends and family members using electronic gadgets, we make purchases online using our electronic devices; we spend so much time on social media, etc. The big questions we should ask ourselves are: Is our private information really safe? Are our most “private” conversations actually private? Cheever’s “The Enormous Story” should be a wakeup call for us to ask and seek answers to these questions.
The article on blocking the “Big Five” Tech Giants (Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Facebook) by Hill (2019) raises some serious privacy issues related to using products from these giants. One serious concern raised in the article is that the tech giants track activities of internet users. The article also argues that our phones are always eavesdropping on even our most private activities on the internet. And “Once data is out there, it can be misused in ways we don’t expect” (Gillmor, as quoted in Hill, 2019). Even the television sets that we have in our living rooms from these tech giants are installed with surveillance devices which can collect information such as what we like watching and what we do not like, and some can even collect what we say. In other words, the article argues that products from the tech giants have invaded our privacy, yet we insist on continuing to use them. We do not realize that they have their infrastructures laid down for trafficking our information. Even the information that we fill into our online profiles and the apps we download to our phones are siphoning our private data.
But despite the above concerns, I think it is impossible for us to live without technological products, especially from the above tech companies. Most of their products make their lives easier in so many ways. For example, mobile phones make it possible for us to communicate with people from around the world. Applications such as WhatsApp, Twitter, etc. which we can download from stores enable us to send and receive messages within the click of a button. The internet – which we can access on the go using these devices – has also affected other spheres of our lives from education, health, and many others. With just a powered laptop and internet connection, a student in Africa can study in an online American University and earth his or her degree just like the other students. In the field of medicine, these gadgets have made it possible for health experts from across the world to collaborate even without being in the same room or physical location.
As we grapple with the idea that we cannot do without the tech products, especially the above-mentioned companies, we should also realize that there are precautions we can take to enhance our privacy. For instance, we could limit the amount of time we spend on social media websites, and we should also be mindful of the information we upload online. As stated above, the technological platforms and devices we use are constantly eavesdropping on us. We could also delete some unnecessary apps from our devices and even switch them whenever we are not using them. In other words, instead of allowing ourselves to be controlled by technological products, we should take control of our lives and limit the amount of time we spend with them and avoid uploading sensitive data to the internet.
Conclusion
The focus of this essay was to explore different views on the issue of privacy in regard to using technological products. As evidenced by the above discussions, many concerns have been raised about the use of electronic gadgets and related products. The Big Five tech companies are being claimed to always be spying on users of their products. But despite this sad claim, many people find it difficult to live without these products. The best thing we can do therefore, is to limit our usage of the products and be mindful of the information we capture into online platforms because it can be misused in ways we can never imagine.
References
Cheever, J. (1983). The Enormous Radio. Creative Education.
Hill, K. (2019). I Cut the ‘Big Five’ Tech Giants from My Life. It Was Hell. Gizmodo. Retrieved from https://gizmodo.com/i-cut-the-big-five-tech-giants-from-my-life-it-was-hel-1831304194